24 hour race
After being a runner at the 24 Hour Race in KL in 2017, I was determined to bring the idea to UWC Thailand. For those who aren't familiar with it, it is an endurance relay race where students form teams and take it in turn to run continuously for 24 hours, having one member on the track at all times. Runners raise funds as well as awareness to benefit anti-slavery charities of our choosing, this years beneficiaries being the Good Shepherd Sisters and Child Rescue Nepal in the hope of further strengthening our relationship as a school with them.
Being a relatively new UWC, its receptive nature to planting new ideas presented the perfect opportunity to organise a race like this. Phuket, by nature of its geographical context, is also well known in the region for its sex trafficking and forced slavery (especially in the Patong area, a well known red light district). Thus, the event strikes a good balance between fun and social responsibility. The concept behind the race resonates very strongly and align with ours as a movement, giving members of our community the opportunity participate in an event that demands us to be conscious global citizens on an issue of such prevalence and importance.
p.s. skip the next two/three paragraphs if you don’t want to hear about organising rants
As with all first years of event organisation, putting the race together was somewhat of a logistical nightmare. The whole process began in May 2018, in which by nature of the scale event, there were meetings with the Head of School, Secondary Principal, Heads of Sports and CAS Coordinators. After weeks of coming up with a more solid structure and fine tuning the technicalities into something more achievable for the size of our island and projected numbers, we got the green light to make it happen! It was one of the first times I communicated with individuals outside the school, essentially representing the school, to handle the logistics of an event of such a large scale. After numerous emails back and forth between reps at Thanyapura and a number of meetings in which I had to sound like I learnt a bunch of financial terms, we had the track booked for November 2018. It was great to have this out of the way before the break, but little did we our complacency would catch up with us later.
We did not anticipate our return from summer to be as stressful as it was, moving from Orientation Week to EE deadlines to IAs and tests in between. We seemed to fall behind on preparation, which after a couple meetings and considerations led us to move it to January 2019 to get everything in order. Mu got on board and started helping us further structure our workflow, and we honestly wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without her helping us sort out what needed to be done. By December break, we had the website up and running, registrations open and the word out that the race was on. Back from break and we had 2 weeks to troubleshoot, get all the money in and get everything together. In the final week, we realised a crucial element lacking - staff supervisors (imagine, for all 24 hours, how could we have forgotten this). After 2 days of ups and downs and sleepless nights, a number of fantastic staff volunteered a couple of hours out of their weekend to come down and help us out, just another reason why I’m so grateful to be surrounded by a supportive community like this one.
The day before, the organising team met on the track to get all final details sorted, check the sound system, delegate tasks and shifts for the day and any emergency protocols. It was crazy and nerve-wracking to think that this project we’d been working on for more than 6 months was the next day. We’d put on so much work into this, and it felt amazing to know that we were so close to it being a success.
My alarm went off at 6.30am. The day had finally arrived. 19th January 2019. I had a shower, one I knew would be my only for at least the next 26 hours. Anna and I had assembled the race packs before, and we headed down to the track where I wrote my speech (in last minute fashion as usual) once we had set up everything for registration. At first I searched for inspirational quotes, possible anecdotes, anything at all I could draw inspiration from that would come across as motivational and powerful. Then it hit me, I put my phone away and stood there for 3 minutes explaining to myself why I started this in the first place. Why I devoted close to half my time at UWCT on this project. And everything came to me.
Of course I put it down in a structure so it was a bit more cohesive (and so that I didn’t forget the safety procedures Kru Jon said we had to mention), but standing up on that stage and knowing we had started something incredible that was making an actual difference to people’s lives and that would go on for generations at UWCT was a feeling out of this world. After a couple words on the Good Shepherd Sisters and Child Rescue Nepal as well as a quick stretch led by Kru Lucy, the race kicked off.
We had team spirits high in the first couple of hours, every Pink Lady in bright sports kit, other teams cheering each other on across the pitch and people grooving out to music blasting through the system. As the midday sun emerged, the energy noticeably dissipated among some, but not for others who (whether wisely or not) decided to sprint for what seemed like more than an hour, only to result in much fatigue for the next few. It was truly heartwarming to see the community come together for an event like this, taking care of each other and doing their part in whatever way they could to contribute to the cause. Our Head of PR ran some super cool stories on our instagram page about why people were running the race, which I've attached in a gallery below (also posted at @uwctwentyfour!).
As night approached, the weather too became much more bearable, might I say pleasant even. I for one am not a runner, but the cool wind breezing through my trimmed hair and against my half-asleep face was almost refreshing, the most content I’ve felt from running in my life. We kept each other awake through exchanges in stories, jokes and poking fun at each other. The night went by pretty quickly, and I began feeling sick in the wee hours of morning - which I attributed to lack of sleep and not eating enough but brushed it off pretty quickly (a mistake here). The sunrise was beautiful, and produced picture perfect shots of people running into it.
With T-5 minutes to the end of the race, spirits were high and most team members had returned for the last leg of the race. There were participants sprinting and giving it their all, with teams trying to catch up and close the gap to climb the rankings. We had teachers, families and students on the track, pushing each other for this last part and surprisingly loads of smiles to conceal the fatigue and lack of sleep.
All of a sudden, I was hit with a migraine like a tidal-wave, bringing me to the ground and forcing me to give the closing ceremony a miss as friends stayed with me and splashed water on my face to cool me. The dehydration and lack of eating through the 24 hours had caught up to me, and while all I needed to last was about 10 more minutes, my body wasn’t very grateful for how I had treated it (not just over the past 24 hours, but I’m guessing with all the stress for the 2 weeks pre-race). I think I could learn a thing or two about delegating and not being such a control-freak, but I guess that’s all part of this process of learning!
The event ran pretty smoothly, other than a few hiccups with an insect sting and aching muscles. I felt pretty powerful being able to disable essentially the whole DP for the whole week after the race (especially everyone limping around school on Monday!). But in all seriousness, the ability to bring an event like this to the school was immensely gratifying, and the amount of work the whole team put into making it a success couldn’t have me prouder <3 Let’s hope next year’s is bigger and better!